Report: Palm Pre Sees Dreadful UK/IRL Sales

[Guest]

"Hardly surprising. People only really bought Pres because their networks didn't have the iPhone. O2 has offered the iPhone still launch and now most of the other UK networks are getting the iPhone too. Pretty much everyone I know is getting an iPhone when they're due a new phone upgrade. I've only ever heard or read about the Pre online. It may as well be vaporware here."

Not true. I shopped the iPhone and decided it would be a downgrade from my Treo in everything I cared about except the screen. Then the Pre came out, with decent e-mail, decent keyboard, excellent calendaring, and a screen with as many pixels as the iPhone. It even has a decent music app, although that was low on my priority list. I'm mostly happy with it. (and still have no desire for an iPhone.) If more people had it and more people wrote apps for it, I think I'd be completely happy with it.

 

[Guest]

I bought a Pré for my wife last October... bad idea, she doesn't have eye for me anymore! She used to have Treo 680 and really loved it, until she dropped it in a sink full of water (it actually still functioned as a phone but the screen was so damaged so that it vertually unuseable - however we managed to do last sync).

As I was on a business trip in Germany and we actually live in Belgium, I told her to go and get an iPhone ... but -as she's sending 90% of her e-mails via smartphone- there was no way she'd be getting headaches doing this without a full keyboard, and considering Nokia's E71, she figured she'd miss the touch screen.

Told her that she couldn't have it both ways and that she should have waited to screw up her Treo as the new Palm Pre phone was still not out in Belgium. Luckily, as I googled that night, I found out that it was just released in Germany -SIM lock free- so I stopped over in an O2 shop an bought one.

To me it is really the only iPhone WITH FULL KEYBOARD and the WebOS is stunning and in many ways better than the Apple OS. On X-mas eve it actually beat my brother's iPhone 3GS downloading a Youtube movie!

PALM beats APPLE technologically, but they suck in marketing and commercializing their products, and it is true ... people have just about forgotten about Palm in Europe.

But it would be a shame if Palm and this stunning WebOS would disappear ...

 

[eccentric909]

[citation][nom]chomlee[/nom]I have a pre and I love it. Most people don't know this but last week Palm released several 3D games such as sims, golf, and need for speed undercover. I purchased golf and need for speed and found the graphics to be comparible to the psp (trully awesome for a phone). Hopefully that will help the sales of the pre.[/citation]

I have a Pixi and while not as powerful as a Pre, it is still a very nice phone. What I really love about it though, is how incredibly light it is, for how many features are packed into it. It weighs 1/2 as much as my girlfriend's Blackberry, 1/2 as much as my brother's Samsung Instinct, and 1/2 as much as my cousin's IPhone (who by the way can't stay on the phone for more than 10 minutes without AT&T dropping the call).

Well, technically it isn't half, but it does feel that way. The Pixi weighs 92g, Blackberry 119g, Instinct 124g, IPhone 135g, however while you're holding them you feel a big difference and with someone who has carpal tunnel, that difference is a lot.

The Pixi at first glance, looks as if the chiclet keys are too small, but once you type on it, you realize they're not and how nice they actually feel. It takes decent photos, the mp3 player sounds nice and while it doesn't have nearly as many apps as Apple or Google, there is more than enough for what I need. I'm not a big phone gamer, since I have a PSP, but the ones that are available aren't that bad. What is nice is the Pixi has close to the same resolution as the Pre, 320x400 vs 320x480. It is a bit slower however, but you really only notice this multi-tasking. The gestures are very nice, the touch screen very responsive, very nice battery life and the colors nice and vivid.

I'm pretty happy with the phone and with it's price. My girlfriend picked it up for me around XMas for $49 and added me to her plan.

The biggest downside to the Pixi is lack of wi-fi, but where I live out in the sticks of Michigan, that isn't too much of a problem except when I'm home and would like to use my home network. Good thing Sprint has an excellent signal out in this neck of the woods and with the unlimited plan, doesn't really hurt too bad.

Either way, there are a lot of nice phones out there, sad to see Palm isn't doing as well in Europe, since both the Pre and the Pixi are very nice phones and perfect for me. I would definitely recommend the Pre over the Pixi, unless phone weight is a concern for you. The Pre weighs the same as the IPhone 3Gs (135g), which was the downside for me.

 

[hardwarekid9756]

IMHO:

I am sure they are actually that dismal, but I'd also like to see the sales figures for all the other phones. I postulate that there is just a HUGE non-iPhone diversity level over there. I bet that all the android handsets are doing similarly, and that even the iPhone, while markedly more robust, won't be faring in the huge numbers its seeing both domestically and abroad elsewhere. In the glorious "Islands of the Crown", my guess is that it's just a very competitive market and that there is a large level of diversity amongst phone purchase.

 

[stefke]

[citation][nom]omnimodis78[/nom]Jane, you keep referring to Europe, and yet you're only providing stats on UK/IRL - surely you know that Europe is a continent currently made up of 50 countries, with the United Kingdom being one of those countries. How are the sales in Italy? Belgium? Hungary? Poland? Austria? France? Etc, etc...[/citation]

The Pré was launched in Europe in October following an agreement between Palm and Telefonica. As Telefonica is only present in Spain, Germany and UK (and apparently Ireland as well), those are the only countries where the Pré is available. As far as I know the only country where the Pré comes SIMlock-free would be Germany (that's where I bought my wife's Pré to be used in Belgium).

It has been announced now that in 2Q10 the Pré and Pixi will be launched in France with SFR.

Coming back to the poor Marketing record of Palm, the German O2 salesman told me he'd never heard about Palm Smartphones until a few before weeks it was sold in his shop, and remembered the name only from old PDA's. I've heard salespeople -when people argue that they might miss a real keyboard- actually joke that they're not 'up to date' when still preferring a real keyboard over a virtual one. They are SOOO trained to sell iPhones that they'd actually ignore the jewel that lies in their shop (in case they also offer the Pré). I think that's what's happening in Ireland (and possibly in UK), if O2 sells both the iPhone and (exclusively) the Palm Pré.

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